Russet coloured leaves are falling as I sit and stare out the window. At one time, I would have found them so beautiful and wondrous, amazed by the fact that no two leaves are the exact same colour or shape. Gold, red, mahogany…there aren't enough words to name all the colours. There are so many, carpeting the grounds, until a gust of wind picks them up and tosses them about violently as they whisper to each other like the rush of sea upon sand, a secret of centuries of undisturbed beauty that nothing could change.
Change is an awful thing, when it is the sudden end of something beautiful. It affects everyone around them and leaves them numb, unable to hear or see or feel anything, just the reverberating question in their head 'Why?' You said you'd always be there to kiss away my tears and hold me when I needed you. You made me feel safe as everything crumbled around me. I still don't understand. However, I know you won't be helping me any more. You won't stop me sitting and lifting the blade to my arm, and you won't cry when you see the marks afterwards. Because you don't care any more. I'm just another piece in the jigsaw of your past, making a bigger picture for you. I can't let you become a piece of my past. You ARE the bigger picture. It hurts so much, especially when I think of how we used to be. Will he know your body as well as I do? Will he learn all your little spots I know so well? Will he worship your body as I did?
It doesn't matter. Nothing ever does. We come, we go, and it's always the same. Change is imminent and unavoidable, for us mere humans at least. For better or for worse and that is a promise. It will remain a promise, unbroken and sweet, not shattered and bitter like when you promised me the same. Pieces of jigsaws, filling the air.
I blink and glance at the house elf and nod slightly, and return to gazing out the window. If I imagine hard enough, I can almost believe I am back at Hogwarts, and soon I will be meeting you in the Room of Requirement where we will talk and laugh about the boys who swoon over us and then our lips will meet in a warm, sticky kiss. I spot a leaf floating ever so gently past the window, and it's almost the exact red/gold shade of your hair. I think back to the last time we were together, on my birthday, when you filled the Room of Requirement with lilies and narcissus. Us. Together. Forever, or so I thought. Then I found out the day before graduation that Potter had proposed to you. And you accepted. Was it so easy to forget me so suddenly? You were so beautiful that day, so radiant. Why couldn't you look like that for me? And when you looked at him with so much love in you eyes, my heart broke.
The leaves are still whispering. They always will. Breathy voices tell of summer days in the sun, secret liaisons and stolen kisses in abandoned corridors. Is our piece there? Maybe I can find it, cling to it, treasure it, and hold it so hard it hurts.
I will always, always be here, unchanging and hiding in the whispers of the leaves.